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Napalm in the Heart

Pol Guasch
Translated by Mara Faye Lethem

The arrival of a blistering debut voice in international literature, and a radical work of literary fiction—poetic, provocative, artful and singular.

127 in stock

£16.99£14.99
Format
Hardback
ISBN
9780571375257
Date Published
04.07.2024
Delivery
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Summary

‘Innovative and original.’ Colm Tóibín
‘Unforgettable.’ Alejandro Zambra
‘Pol Guasch must be one of the best young writers working today.’ Catherine Lacey

The arrival of a blistering debut voice in international literature, and a radical work of literary fiction—poetic, provocative, artful and singular.

In a deserted village, an unnamed young man waits for an opportunity to escape. Society has been militarised, the dead lie unburied and thugs patrol the land. As he waits, he marks the days that pass and writes to his lover Boris, with whom he shares an animal desire.

In a series of impassioned dispatches, Napalm in the Heart unearths what it means to survive when language and nature fail, to refuse to give up when everything is lost.

Critic Reviews

Pol Guasch creates an atmosphere that is menacing and powerfully dramatic, but he is also a poet who is interested in image and tone, in texture and rhythmic variation. This mixture gives his innovative and original novel a mesmeric force, wonderfully captured in this translation.

Colm Tóibín
Critic Reviews

Pol Guasch has written a punk novel that quotes Iggy Pop's 'heart full of napalm', but there is no rock here and no animal roaming the streets. We instead find ourselves in a mysterious world of the future - or of the past. A world of desire and survival, in the aftermath of an apocalypse marked by different languages, obscure repression, and prose as mysterious as it is beautiful.

Mariana Enríquez
Critic Reviews

Pol Guasch has crafted in his novel a struggle for existence that still never gives up on his characters' dreams. Napalm in the heart challenges the boundaries between delicacy and brutality, creating an unforgettable novel in the process.

Alejandro Zambra
Critic Reviews

Pol Guasch must be one of the best young writers working today.

Catherine Lacey
Critic Reviews

Reading this book is like traversing a dark forest and spotting, when night seemed to devour it all, the light of the fireflies as the glimmer of hope. A beautiful tale of survival, love and resistance.

Carlos Fonseca
Critic Reviews

A lyrical gut-punch of a novel about one man’s search for purpose at the bitter end of a bitterer world.

Maggie Millner